All Things New—A Sermon for Easter Season

We are a people of hope and this is our season of hope.  We are a hopeful people because the woman who went to the tomb discovered that Jesus was alive.  God had raised him from the dead.

And we are hopeful people because in faith we embrace the promise that God’s victory over evil, sin, and death in Jesus shall be our victory as well.   Not only has he been raised, by faith we believe that we shall be as well.

We do not look forward to death or dying.   We still contemplate our own demise with no small measure of anxiety.  We surely grieve at the loss of those near and dear to us.  Surely, we find premature, senseless death, particularly of innocent people through disease, violence, natural disasters, hunger, and accidents a source of despair—even when it affects people unknown to us.

Still, by faith, we are able to say, however feebly, however uncertainly, still with conviction and hope: Oh death, where is thy victory, oh, grave, where is thy sting? 

We are surely people of hope. 

But let me invite you to consider the possibility today, that we are not nearly hopeful enough!   We have not embraced the fullness of God’s promises to us as the Scriptures bear witness to them.  

What I remember being taught in the church in which I was raised as a child was that I had an immortal soul.  I was told to believe in God and to believe in the atoning death of Jesus Christ so that I could have forgiveness.  Then, at my death my soul would go to heaven.    And I suspect that most Christians today, possibly most of you sitting here, believe something like that.

I don’t know when I began to notice a problem with that belief.  It may not have been until I was in college or seminary, but at some point I came to realize: that’s not what the Bible says and that’s not even what the historic creeds of the church say.

You know the Apostles’ Creed, don’t you?   What do we say there?  “We believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.  And Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord,” etc.  And, finally, “we believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of the saints, the forgiveness of sins, THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY, and the life everlasting.”

There is nothing there about an immortal soul; we talk about the resurrection of the body.   Think about the Easter stories: They don’t say that what the women got to the tomb, the found Jesus body but that he appeared to them in spirit or as a disembodied soul.  No, that’s not it.  The tomb was empty.  His body wasn’t there.  He wasn’t there!

I shall never forget a pastoral visit I made as a young pastor to a man affiliated with the church I was serving at the time.   I had never met anyone or heard of anyone before or since who was so ravaged by illness and disease.  His whole life, his whole existence from the time of his birth had been nothing but illness, disease, and deformity.

What I have never forgotten is the question he asked me very early in our conversation after he had told me about all the things that ailed him.  “Preacher,” he asked,  “Do you think in the next life I’ll have a better body than this one?  Do you think I’ll get one that’s better than most peoples’ since the one I got this time is so much worse?”

I cannot tell you how happy I was to be able to say to him, “Brother, I can’t tell you that you’ll get a body that’s better than everyone else’s.  But, I can tell you this: the promise of the Bible is that you will get a new one, a better one because ‘death will be no more; and there will be no mourning, no crying, no pain.’”

So you believe you have an immortal soul that’s going to heaven when you die?  Brother or sister, I’m here to tell you: the good news is even better than that!   You will have a new body!  We believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting! 

But there is another respect in which I suspect our hope is sometimes too narrow.  Another respect, related to this one, in which we have not embraced fully the promises of God to us. 

One of the most incredible passages in the Bible—the most hopeful, if you will— is the one from Revelation chapter 21.  It says in part: “ Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away… And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’  And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.”

The visionary of the Revelation was probably quoting a passage from the prophet Isaiah there.  It was the Old Testament reading for Easter Sunday.  You may have used or you may not have.  If you did, listen to parts of it again:

65:17 For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.…

… no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in Jerusalem, or the cry of distress.

65:20 No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.

65:22 They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; …

65:23 They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity;

65:25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent--its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.

Am I wrong to suggest that these expressions of hope from Revelation and Isaiah suggest that ultimately a biblically formed hope, a fully Christian hope is for a world in which there is no injustice, no human deprivation, no war.

Think of it this way: the promise is that there will be no crying, no pain, no death.  You and I read that, and because our lives are so privileged, so relatively free of tragedy and injustice and violence we associate the absence of crying and pain with that which accompanies our mostly natural deaths at ripe old ages.   But for the vast majority of people in human history, even for millions upon millions of people today, the primary source of crying and pain and grief is not natural death at a ripe old age.   Rather it is famine, and injustice, and war!  If God’s promise is to put an end to crying, and pain, and death, it is the promise of an end to hunger, and exploitation, and war!   If God’s victory over death is also a victory over sin, then surely it is victory over these realities that are but products of human sin!

God is making all things new!  Our hope is for our souls made new, and our bodies, because God is making all things new!   Our hope is for ourselves made new as individuals, but also for the renewal and transformation of our friendships, our communities, our economies, and our politics, because God is making all things new.  Our hope is our human reality but is also for the animals; the rivers and mountains and seas; the polar ice caps, the forests, meadows, and plains, because God is making all things new: a new heaven and a new earth!   We hope for eternity, but we are hopeful within time within history, because God is at work even here, even now, making all things new.

Let me get very personal for a minute, if you will allow me that indulgence.  For a long time now I have noticed that I’m not much interested personally in life after death!   For a long time I’ve thought that the most important thing about being a person of faith was what it does for us here and now in terms of giving us a way to make sense of a difficult world and to find a way to remain joyful, and loving, and hopeful in it.   And for me throughout most of my life that has been enough.

I had thought that as I got older the matter of life after death would interest me a great deal more.   But it hasn’t.  Indeed, as I’ve gotten older and the reality of my own death, when I allow myself to contemplate it, has gotten nearer I’ve found myself thinking and saying out loud from time to time: “You know if I were asked, ‘what do you think happens when you die?’ and everything depended on my getting the answer right, I think I would say ‘I bet when we die we’re probably just dead! I think that’s probably all there is.’”  

But recently my thoughts have taken a different turn.   I’ve been thinking: it’s so easy for me to be agnostic if you will about life after death; easy for me not to need that hope because I’ve had such an incredibly fortunate life!  I was raised in a loving family; my world has never been threatened by violence on a day-to-day basis; I’ve never experienced injustice or known hunger.  How easy it is for me to say this life is good enough!  Life owes me nothing!  God owes me nothing!

But what about people whose lives have been permanently scarred by sexual abuse as children?  What about those millions of Africans that were kidnapped from their homes and forced into the bottoms of slave ships? What about the one’s who died in those hell holes?   What about people whose lives have been cut short by disease, or famine, or war? What about the thousands of children who die every day to this day from malnutrition and the parents who’ve had to watch their children die helplessly?   What about the people whose lives have been filled mostly with struggle, with fear, with suffering, with mourning and tears?  How dare I speculate that this world, this life is all there is?   How dare I serenely enjoy the love, the beauty, the security I’ve known saying “this is good enough!” in the face of their suffering?

In truth this world isn’t good enough, even if it’s been good enough for you or for me, until it is good enough for all of us!  And thanks be to God, the promise to us is that it shall be.  God is making all things new.

Just as I was thankful that I could say to that very deformed and ill man so many years ago, “The promise of the bible is that you will have a new body,” I am thankful that we can say to all those whose lives have been devastated by abuse, or war, or famine, or injustice: “It shall not always be so.  One day you will enjoy a world without crying, without pain, without tears because God is making all things new!”

Now let me back off a bit and come down to earth a bit here at the end.   Let me “get real” for a minute as we might have said when we were youngsters.  I don’t know exactly what I’m talking about when I affirm the resurrection of the body or a world without injustice, or famine, or war. 

I don’t understand the physics or the biology of a resurrected body.  I have no idea what its molecular structure will be.   We are dealing with mysteries; things beyond our full comprehension.   And the New Testament writers were aware that they were dealing with mysteries here. They affirm that the tomb was empty, that the resurrected Jesus ate and drank, and bore the marks of his crucifixion in his resurrected body.  But they also say he passed through locked doors and seemed to appear and disappear at will.    Paul says of our resurrection that we will have spiritual bodies.   What does that mean?  Is that an oxymoron? A logical impossibility like a “round square?” 

And I surely don’t claim to understand exactly what a new heaven and a new earth means.  What will it mean to live in a world without injustice, and war and famine?  How will such a world come to be? What is it’s relationship to the world and the history we know inhabit? We are surely dealing with another mystery here. 

We are dealing with mysteries, but I believe they are essential ones.  There are profound matters at stake in our embracing the fullness of God’s promises to us, in our affirmation of the hope for the resurrection of the body and a world made new, God’s Kingdom, God’s will being realized here on earth as it is in heaven. 

Put simply what’s at stake is this: we can only live into the way of eternal life, we can only live into the life of love, especially for the poor and vulnerable to which Jesus calls us if we value, take seriously, honor the body, the flesh, this material world, human history.  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; the spiritual and the material worlds, eternity and time and God called it good.   God called it all good.

 In the fullness of time, the very Word of God through whom everything that is came to be, became flesh, took on our physical, material reality, entered human history and lived fully in a particular community a particular economic and political context.  And the promise of God to us is that we shall be raised IN THE FLESH, with our bodies, new though they may be, to live in a world made new.

In the light of all this, there is no place among us for any attitude that disparages or discounts the significance of the body or the significance of the human struggle to find lives of meaning and purpose and justice here and now!    WE have not been alone, but Christian people have always been and continue to be first among those who work tirelessly to feed the hungry, to accompany the poor, to work tirelessly in the world for justice and peace.   And what explains our place among that company is our conviction that the one we call God has called us to such commitments and God has done so because we are those who he is forming to bear witness, to be a sign and a seal, of his that great promise: behold, I am making all things new; I shall dwell among my people; there shall be no crying, no mourning, no pain, no death, no war, no famine, no injustice.

Thanks be to God we have that hope!